Less than a year after Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to one of the worst droughts in California history, a consortium of nationwide water experts reported Thursday that 44 percent of the state is again experiencing at least moderate drought conditions.

We conclude that sea-ice loss of the magnitude expected in the next decades could substantially impact California’s precipitation, thus highlighting another mechanism by which human-caused climate change could exacerbate future California droughts.

Cape Town residents line up to refill water bottles at Newlands Brewery Spring Water Point on January 30, 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa.Photo: Morgana Wingard/Getty Images Cape Town, South Africa, a city of 4 million people, is just weeks away from becoming the world’s first major city to run entirely out of water — but of course, it won’t be the last. South Africa’s second-largest city after Johannesburg, Cape Town was not an obvious candidate for that dubious distinction. In 2014, its dams were flush with rainwater and its water-conservation strategy was award-winning. Then came the worst drought South Africa had seen in a century, lasting three whole years. Now, the Theewaterskloof Dam, the city’s main reservoir, is at just 13 percent of capacity. Climate change is obviously a factor in Cape Town’s water crisis, as South Africa faces a hotter and

When it comes to Pakistan, President Trump’s Twitter feud with one of America’s most important partners in the fight against terrorism has dominated the news. But beneath the headlines, a massive water crisis is unfolding that has profound implications for the country’s stability and security. Rapid urbanization and conflict combined with corruption, crime and years of mismanagement have left a massive proportion of the population without access to clean water. And now, this long-festering crisis threatens to upend Pakistan’s politics. Perhaps the strangest thing about Pakistan’s water crisis is that until recently, the country had been doing well in connecting more of its citizens to water supply and sanitation networks. From 1990 to 2015, the percentage of the country’s population with access to clean water increased from 86 percent to 91 percent. But in a reversal of what happens in most

That's weird that San Francisco Bay Area is considered NORMAL. I was away for three weeks and they had some rain and the ground appears to have moisture (I presume that living on foothills gives drainage for prolonged periods).

However, it is so unseasonably warm that I suspect that ground water to be depleted soon enough.

I use to find it somewhat cold bicycling during the winter here and the summer often was too sunny and warm. Then the winters became my preferred bicycling season. Now, it is almost too warm during the middle of the day during the winter. This is rapid climate change.

Reacting to the repeated unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan, Union Minister and Dalit leader Ramdas Athawale proposed an all-out decisive war with the neighbouring country with the aim of taking back Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

"Pakistan frequently violates ceasefire. Although we have extended hand of friendship to them so many times, I feel now the time has come for a decisive battle with Pakistan. That country needs to be taught a lesson," the union minister of state for social justice and empowerment said.

In his motion of thanks to President's address in Rajya Sabha, Athawale quoted former PM Atal Vajpayee to strengthen his rationale for the war with Pakistan.

"India is a tiger and Pakistan is a midget in front of us. We should take a cue from what Atal ji said and warn Pakistan that if it doesn't accept our offer of friendship, we will attack," the Maharashtra leader said.

"The attack should be so severe that not only we are able to seize the illegally occupied portion of Kashmir but also some parts of the Islamic republic," he added.

The world's largest rivers begin in glaciated mountain regions. However, climate change may cause many glaciers to disappear. Will water become scarce? There are around 200,000 glaciers worldwide. They play a central role in the water cycle, particularly in the middle and low latitudes, by offsetting runoff fluctuations. Rivers are lifelines on which billions of people depend worldwide, either directly or indirectly. Will water become scarce in the near or distant future if glaciers become increasingly smaller or disappear completely? Will the Alps, the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains and the Andes continue to act as water towers? We set out to answer this question in a study of all the earth's mountain regions and the drainage basins of their large rivers. Decisive "peak water" We used a glacier model that describes the development of glaciers worldwide and their future runoff until the end of

The world has abundant freshwater but it is unevenly distributed and under increasing pressure, UN agencies say, as highlighted by the severe shortages in Cape Town. WATER, WATER 'EVERYWHERE' More than 97 per cent of the planet's water is salty, most of it in the oceans and seas, but there is also a good supply of freshwater. Every year around 42.8 trillion cubic metres of renewable freshwater circulates as rain, surface water or groundwater, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This equals 16,216 litres per person per day - four times the amount required in the United States, for example, for personal and domestic consumption, industry and agriculture. Depending on diet and lifestyle, a person needs between 2,000 and 5,000 litres of water a day to produce their food and meet their drinking and sanitation requirements, the FAO says. About 60 per cent

Carbon emissions from the Brazilian Amazon are increasingly dominated by forest fires during extreme droughts rather than by emissions from fires directly associated with the deforestation process, according to a study in Nature Communications.

The authors found that despite a 76 percent decline in deforestation rates over the past 13 years, fire incidence increased by 36 percent during the 2015 drought compared to the preceding 12 years.

They estimate that forest fires during drought years alone contribute on average emissions of one billion tonnes of CO2 annually to the atmosphere, which are more than half those from old-growth forest deforestation.

According to Dr. Aragão, this is the first time scientists have clearly demonstrated how forest fires can become widely spread during recent droughts and how much they influence Amazonian carbon emissions in a decadal scale.

Dr. Marengo adds that three "droughts of the century" in 2005, 2010, 2015/2016 have occurred in the region due to a warmer tropical North Atlantic ocean or to El Nino, and the intensification of these phenomena in the future favours more droughts.

... Our results emphasize the fact that in a hotter and drier future, large swaths of the Amazon, distant from the main deforestation epicentres, may burn.

... We suggest that the Brazilian Amazon may be entering a new land use and land cover phase change in which a decoupling between fire-related and deforestation carbon emissions, driven by recurrent 21st century droughts, can undermine the Brazilian achievement of reducing emissions from deforestation.

Our analyses confirm the hypothesis that C emissions from the Brazilian Amazon are increasingly dominated by forest fires during extreme droughts, rather than emissions from fires directly associated with the deforestation process.

Conceptual model of feedbacks between climate, land use, forests and policies and their expected impacts on fire emissions. The system is divided in two large components: the political sphere (purple box) and the complex environmental system. In the political sphere, the mechanisms for fire emission reduction are divided into three levels of organization from global to local. The complex environmental system is divided in three components: climate (blue box), forests (green box) and land use (light brown box). Positive and negative feedbacks among the components are identified by red and blue arrows, respectively. The resulting effects of these feedbacks are described by coloured diamonds for the expected probability of fire occurrence and circles for the potential fire impact on C emissions. Numbers are displayed to assist with the description of the processes depicted in the main text